Everyone can recognize ducks: they are the birds that swim. In autumn and winter we have lots of ducks, as well as geese and swans, their equally easy to recognize relatives. But here’s the trick: not all birds that swim are ducks, geese, or swans. In fact, we have many birds swimming and ’tis currently the season for all: coots, gallinules, grebes, cormorants and loons may all be spotted on your next visit to the ponds or wetlands.

Let’s take a step back to clarify all the waterfowl I’m not talking about. First, there are many wading birds that rarely or never swim. Herons and egrets present all year round could fall into this category. The same would be true for the vast majority of shorebirds – usually migratory birds, often long-legged and long-billed, such as yellowlegs, willets, godwits, curlews and more. Of the birds that swim, the vast majority are ducks, as well as larger, longer-necked swans and geese, all collectively known as waterfowl.

Today I’m talking about all the other swimming birds, vaguely duck-like. How do you decide if a bird looks like a duck rather than a real duck? Three characteristics more or less unique to ducks immediately come to mind as a good starting point for your identification process. Ducks have broad, horizontally flattened bills. Ducks have webbed feet. And most ducks are highly sexually dimorphic, with males and females looking very different – ​​just think of the bright green heads of male mallards, contrasting with the brown spots of females.

None of today’s birds share all of these characteristics, and most share none. Take first the coots and related gallinules, the most superficially duck-like of today’s flock. Our two local representatives, the American Coot and the Common Gallinule, are both duck-sized black birds common in local ponds. But both are actually members of the rail family and are easily distinguished from ducks by paying a little attention to a few key features: Their bills are narrow and relatively stubby, while their feet are not webbed and more like chicken feet. This latter similarity has led to some of the traditional names for these birds, with coots known as mud hens and gallinules known as moor hens.

The Pied-billed Grebe is the second most likely to cause confusion, although most other grebes are quite distinctive. Overall, grebes are swimming birds characterized by their thin, pointed bills, relatively long necks, minimal tails, and legs placed far back on the body for swimming underwater (although you will rarely see grebes grebe legs). The larger black and white grebes – Clark’s grebes and western grebes – are very distinctive, while the medium-sized horned and eared grebes are somewhat so. But the Pied-billed Grebe is not a stark black and white, but a fairly nondescript brown and therefore relatively duck-like, and can often make an inconspicuous appearance among a pond laden with ducks. However, as with coots, a close examination of the bill once again reveals the difference: the Pied-billed Grebe has a narrow, truncated pill, “foot” with a namesake spot. And if you ever spot a grebe extending a leg, you may notice its strangely duck-like feet, which bear individually webbed toes that don’t connect to the overall webbed pattern typical of ducks.

Two final families of swimming birds are worth mentioning, although they are quite different and unlikely to be confused with ducks. Both are larger underwater hunters: cormorants and loons. Cormorants are strange creatures: large, awkwardly shaped and mostly black with long hooked bills. You can see cormorants swimming, with their long necks sticking out of the water like periscopes, or huddling in groups on coastal rocks (Brandt’s and pelagic cormorants) or in the wetlands of the bay shores (double-crested cormorants). ). Loons, for their part, are famous diving birds, although relatively rarely observed far from ocean coasts: they are marked by a particularly dagger-shaped beak and a short, arched neck.

You knew about ducks, and you are also familiar with swans and Canada geese. But these three webbed, broad-billed birds only scratch the surface of the world’s swimming birds. We are home to much more: moorhens, moorhens, cormorants, grebes and loons.

On the Wing by Jack Gedney takes place every other Monday. He is co-owner of Wild Birds Unlimited in Novato and author of “The Birds in the Oaks: Secret Voices of the Western Woods.” You can reach him at [email protected].